of the town was visible over the tree-tops.  On these hills could be seen fresh-made parapets, and the movements of men, against whom I directed the artillery to fire at long range.  The stout resistance made by the enemy along our whole front of a couple of miles indicated a purpose to fight at Cassville; and, as the night was closing in, General Thomas and I were together, along with our skirmish-lines near the seminary, on the edge of the town, where musket-bullets from the enemy were cutting the leaves of the trees pretty thickly about us.  Either Thomas or I remarked that that was not the place for the two senior officers of a great army, and we personally went back to the battery, where we passed the night on the ground.  During the night I had reports from McPherson, Hooker, and Schofield.  The former was about five miles to my right rear, near the “nitre-caves;” Schofield was about six miles north, and Hooker between us, within two miles.  All were ordered to close down on Cassville at daylight, and to attack the enemy wherever found.  Skirmishing was kept up all night, but when day broke the next morning, May 20th, the enemy was gone, and our cavalry was sent in pursuit.  These reported him beyond the Etowah River.  We were then well in advance of our railroad-trains, on which we depended for supplies; so I determined to pause a few days to repair the railroad, which had been damaged but little, except at the bridge at Resaca, and then to go on.

Nearly all the people of the country seemed to have fled with Johnston’s army; yet some few families remained, and from one of them I procured the copy of an order which Johnston had made at Adairsville, in which he recited that he had retreated as far as strategy required, and that his army must be prepared for battle at Cassville.  The newspapers of the South, many of which we found, were also loud in denunciation of Johnston’s falling back before us without a serious battle, simply resisting by his skirmish-lines and by his rear-guard.  But his friends proclaimed that it was all strategic; that he was deliberately drawing us farther and farther into the meshes, farther and farther away from our base of supplies, and that in due season he would not only halt for battle, but assume the bold offensive.  Of course it was to my interest to bring him to battle as soon as possible, when our numerical superiority was at the greatest; for he was picking up his detachments as he fell back, whereas I was compelled to make similar and stronger detachments to repair the railroads as we advanced, and to guard them.  I found at Cassville many evidences of preparation for a grand battle, among them a long line of fresh intrenchments on the hill beyond the town, extending nearly three miles to the south, embracing the railroad-crossing.  I was also convinced that the whole of Polk’s corps had joined Johnston from Mississippi, and that he had in hand three full corps, viz., Hood’s, Polk’s, and Hardee’s, numbering about sixty thousand men, and could not then imagine why he had declined battle, and did not learn the real reason till after the war was over, and then from General Johnston himself.